Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [60]
In the center of the chamber a ceiling panel had been removed, and a barred grille like the one that had blocked further ascent in the repair shaft lay propped in a corner. Holding the staff with its glowing end aloft, Luke could see that the shaft rose upward, where the bundled pipes and hoses, finger-fat power lines and the wide ribbon-cables of computer couplers, flowed aloft in a static river from half a dozen lateral conduits to some central locus above. Yellow and black banded the lower half meter or so of the shaft, but there was no sign, no written warning. Only the small, baleful glare of red power lights, and above them, the opal glister of the enclision grid, spiraling eerily into darkness.
A tug on his belt caught his attention. Luke put down his hand protectively as the Jawa pawed at the lightsaber that hung at his belt—the second lightsaber, the one it had brought him. After a moment’s hesitation Luke yielded it, and the Jawa ran to a spot directly under the open shaft. It set the weapon on the floor, considered it for a moment, then moved it a few centimeters and changed the angle, clearly re-creating the exact position in which it had been found.
Luke hobbled to stand over it, and looked up. The shaft gaped above him, a narrow chimney breathing death.
It led to the heart of the ship. There were too many power lines, too many bundles of fiber-optic cables, too many heavy-duty coolant pipes for it to lead anywhere but to the computer core.
Luke stooped, carefully balancing on his staff, and picked up the lightsaber, then straightened and gazed up into that darkness again.
He understood.
Someone had ascended that shaft, thirty years ago.
There had been two of them who’d made it onto the ship in the battered Y-wing he’d found. One had taken the launch and left, probably arguing that reinforcements should be sought.
The other had known, or guessed, that there might not be time before the ship jumped to hyperspace to start its mission: that the risk was too great, the stakes too high, to permit the luxury of getting out of there alive. And that other had remained, to attempt to disarm the Will.
The deadly enclision grid seemed to grin, like pale, waiting teeth.
“I’m sorry,” said Luke, very softly, to that waiting column of shadow. “I wish I could have been here to help you.”
She would have needed help.
He turned the weapon in his hand, knowing instinctively that it had been a woman who made it, who wielded it. A woman with large hands and a long reach, to judge by the weapon’s proportions.… Yoda had told him that the old Jedi Masters could learn quite startling things about a Knight just by examining the lightsaber whose making was a Jedi’s final test.
Around the rim of the handgrip someone had taken the time to inlay a thin line of bronze tsaelke, the long-necked, graceful cetaceans of Chad Ill’s deep oceans.
Still more quietly, he said, “I wish I could have known you.”
He clipped the lightsaber to his belt, and began to hunt for the way this woman—his colleague and fellow Jedi—had gotten into the gun room.
There was only one entrance, straight into a turbolift, which refused to respond to Luke’s touch on the summoning button, but at a guess it was the way she had used. With a little effort he could short the doors into opening, he knew. From there he’d have access to the decks below, either via rope—which could be liberated from a storeroom—or via levitation, if he wanted to risk that great a drain on his limited strength. He wondered if the Force could be used—as it sometimes could—to hold off the blue lightning-threads of the enclision grid long enough for him to get up the shaft to the ship’s computer core.
The thought of trying it turned him cold.
Once in the core, it should be fairly simple to trigger an overload, to destroy the Eye of Palpatine as it should have been destroyed thirty years ago …
And hadn’t been.
He remembered the Klagg’s screams as it bled and charred to agonizing death in the gangway.